He came to the decision that the fine clothes and luxurious surroundings of the rich and noble were neither Christian nor humane. They caused envy and bitterness in the hearts of those whose lives were one long struggle with poverty. So at once he cast off his gorgeous apparel, denuded his own rooms of all unnecessary and elaborate furnishings, and thus, again and further, placed himself where men could feel the truth and power of his utterances about human brotherhood.
When Russia declared war against Japan, Tolstoi wrote a letter to the Emperor, the state officials, and the Russian people that was a loud trumpet blast heard throughout the world calling upon them in the name of their Creator and down-trodden humanity to stop! and declare peace. Many a man had been sent to Siberia for life--nay, sent to be speedily tortured to death--for far less than this, but this fearless old man let his voice ring out with a power that convinced thousands as never before that war at its best was but a relic of barbarism and a disgrace to every professedly progressive nation.
Oh, for a courage like Tolstoi's--true-hearted, brave, simple-minded, pure, that never failed when called upon. Granted he was "queer," "quixotic," "unbalanced," "impracticable," was not his queerness and impracticability at least on the side of the moral forces of the world? Everybody knew where and how he stood; where his sympathies were; and his life has strengthened the backbone and put new vigor into the weak knees of hundreds of thousands, for moral courage radiates with power that increases according to the square of the distance. It does not grow less; it enlarges; for each man who feels it becomes a new generator and transformer and thus enlarges and increases its radiating power four-, eight-, twelve-fold.
Henry Bergh was another of these heroic moral-courage radiators. His tender heart was cut to the quick day by day by seeing the cruelties perpetrated upon the poor dumb brutes of the city of New York. He determined to do what he could to stop these barbarous practices. He agitated and wrote, spoke and interviewed until he succeeded in getting ordinances and acts passed which gave him power to prevent whatever cruelties he saw. How he was jeered; how he was cursed, when he sought to interfere with a brutal driver who would cruelly whip his horses to compel them to drag loads beyond their strength! The newspapers said he stood in the way of business, and they sarcastically called him "the knight of the doleful countenance," not realizing that it was the cruelties perpetrated by so-called men upon their younger brothers--the dumb animals--that had so frozen the pain and anguish of his heart upon his face. But his heart never failed, his courage never wavered. Threatened, mobbed, his life often in peril, he fearlessly waged constant warfare against cruelty, and to-day the very city that hated and scorned him is building monuments to his honor in every street-watering trough they erect. And his radiant influence has reached every civilized city _in the world_, such is the penetrating radiancy of a loving and true heart.